Le Divorce (2003)
Mid-way through "Le Divorce," I
thought I realized why I disliked the movie so much.
It was about French people. I thought maybe I just
hated the hoity-toity French. But then I thought about
"L'Aubererge Espagnole" and how delightful and charming
it was. No, it's not French people I hate; I hate
the American people in this film too. It's the fucking
upper class that makes me want to slap someone. I
hate rich people.
There is not one character - not
one - that you give a fuck about in "Le Divorce."
These are the most unattractive (in the spiritual
sense), smarmy and smug people to populate a film
in a long, long time. Kate Hudson leads the pack as
a spoiled brat who wouldn't know an honest day's work
from her asshole. She's repugnant here as a ditzy
little ho who starts dating an older smarmy French
guy for absolutely no reason. It's stupid. Of course,
it's a little easier to understand when you see the
repugnant and scruffy younger French guy she had been
boffing. Apparently this girl's pea sized brain is
incapable of attracting a decent guy of any age.
There's a plethora of stars here
and none of them do anything to make you want to watch
the film. Even the casting of the classy and remarkable
Leslie Caron seems like a mistake. She's not as disgusting
and smarmy as her other French counterparts... but
almost. She plays a typical well-to-do French matriarch
and she's so good at it that we want to smack her
one. Naomi Watts plays nothing but a victim here.
She works our last nerve. She's so inane that her
response to being treated like shit by nearly everyone
in the film is to slash her wrists. It's a foolish
and poorly scripted moot point, sad to say. Yawn.
Slash away, bitch; no one cares.
As for the rest of the cast, well,
they are hardly even in the film, really. Even one
of my favorite actresses, Stockard Channing, is really
lackluster here. She nearly bores herself to tears,
never mind the audience, in a worthless part as a
complacent stepmother. Sam Waterston, Stephen Fry,
Thomas Lemmon, Glenn Close, Bebe Neuwirth... none
of them do anything worth noting in the film.
But the absolute worst is Matthew
Modine. He seems like the most horrible actor ever
to grace the screen in his thankless role. Of course,
the film is chopped to bits so no semblance of reality
or character exposition even exists. There's no set-up
to explain anything that goes on in the film. You
can tell director James Ivory has been forced to cut
up his film when he resorts to misplaced wipes for
transitions a few times and suddenly allows voiceover
narration to tie up loose ends when the film's horrible
epilogue finally arrives.
Ivory's script, penned with stalwart
Ruth Prawer-Jhalbvala, is a mishmashed mess of story,
characters and tepid peeks at the financially elite
that makes one want to gag. The source novel here,
by Diane Johnson, must surely be some of the driest
reading this side of Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full."
These are boring characters, with boring lives, telling
their boring stories. These are the kind of people
I would laugh at if ever I was invited to some sort
of swanky party that they might accidentally attend.
Ivory, Prawer-Jhalbvala, and producer
Ismail Merchant have made films for over 20 years
now that include many period dramas, steeped in culturalism
and classism. Most of these films are quite noteworthy.
When the trio work to expose the inequities and sensibilities
of the upper class in these period films, they are
also somehow able to underscore the intricacies and
motivations of the characters. They somehow makes
us care for these people, even if they are rich snobs,
because somehow they also expose their weaknesses
and flaws. No such luck here. When moving to modern
times, the triumvirate of filmmaking talent fails
horribly. (They failed before in the 80's with "Slaves
of New York"). Perhaps, like us, they truly have no
love for these uptight, snooty, classless, and thoroughly
modern creatures.
Note:
In English and some French with
subtitles.
Winona Ryder and Natalie Portman
had both been attached to the project when it was
in development.
Filmed on location in Paris. There
are scenes at the Eiffel Tower.
Viewed on its opening day at the
Dobie in Austin in August 2003.
